Could this happen to you?

A Lake Oswego Oregon real estate company is furious after they claim someone stole their domain name. What was once their virtual property and was prominently displayed on their business cards, brochures, letterhead and all other advertising materials – was not going to a website calling them crooks!

View the original story here
Before we go into what happened next let’s take a look at how you can lose your domain name…

Contrary to popular belief, domains do not expire at the listed date of expiration. When a domain name comes to its expiration date and the owner has not renewed the domain it goes into a status called “expired” – okay, that looks obvious, but we will see that the domain is not truly expired. The expired status lasts 40 days and during this time all the domain services are eventually shut off. Some of the better domain registrars will keep the domain name alive for a couple of weeks (meaning that the website and email still work) while they send weekly email reminders that your domain has expired and you run the risk of losing it. After a couple of weeks all services including website and email are shut down. The idea is that if you are even remotely paying attention you will notice something is wrong. During this period the domain owner can renew or re-register the domain without penalty.

After 40 days are up, the domain’s status changes to “redemption period”. During this period all Whois or contact information begins to be removed. Also, the owner can still renew the domain during this time but it will usually cost an additional fee ranging from $80 to $120. At this point, if a domain is in redemption period it is a good bet that the owner does not plan on renewing the domain unless they are just lazy or otherwise not paying attention to their web business.

Finally, after the redemption period the domain status is changed to “locked”. It is now entering the deletion phase. The original owner no longer has rights to this domain. It is like unclaimed land. This phase is 5 days long and on the last day the domain will be officially dropped from the domain database – ICANN. The domain is now available for registration by anybody.

The entire process takes 75 days from the date a domain name expires. Back to our story…

Susanne and Russ Bergeron had invested a lot in their real estate business including their website. After their website expired a Tennessee man purchased it and now has this in large type on the front page:

“Burgeron Properties and its owner R. Bergeron scammed me out of thousands of dollars. They claim to be in the Real Estate industry and will collect large amounts of money upfront as a “deposit”. That will be the
LAST TIME YOU SEE YOUR MONEY!!!”

Wow. That had to HURT! Russ and Susanne were furious and tried to buy the domain name back, but were stunned at the price. According to Russ, the new owner wanted $5,000 for the website. Russ, disgusted at the turn of events refused to pay the $5,000.

Mistaken Identity

As it turned out, the Tennessee man was slamming a local real estate company with the same last name, but the first name is Raymond… which is what makes the front page even more damaging – the names, when abbreviated, look the same.

Russ and Susanne say their image has been tarnished. They changed all their marketing materials, real estate signs, business cards, Internet marketing and had to start over with a new domain name. Any good will they had with the search engines is gone as they are now building up a new website. “We’re not Bergeron Properties, we’re the Bergeron Team” said Suzanne. The switch in business names has already cost the couple more than $5,000 – not counting any lost opportunities.

Moral of the Story

• Keep track of your domain name yourself.
• Do not rely on a third party or the domain name registrar to contact you about your domain name. If your online business is important to you – memorize your expiration date. It should be like a relatives birthday or your anniversary date – always on your mind when the time approaches.
• You should also look at registering it for more that 1 year at a time.
• Keep your contact information up to date with your domain registrar. They will send out emails but if your email address is incorrect you may be missing something important.
• Keep your phone number and home address up to date.
• Keep your log in information to your registrar in a safe place that you can always find in case you forget it.

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